Carla Saulter has been living without a car—and using public transit as her primary form of transportation—since March of 2003. Though she gave up driving because of concerns about the detrimental effects of car culture (pollution, traffic, sprawl), the decision has profoundly and positively changed her life. Some of these positive changes include: enforced exercise, time to read, reduced expenses, and contact with her community on a level that would never have been possible in the isolated bubble of a single-occupancy vehicle.

This month’s Golden Transfer goes to Dave Johnston, a New Jersey native (the Philadelphia side) and longtime Seattleite who is both car-free and (not coincidentally) a fabulously talented writer.
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This evening, I stood next to an actual skinhead at the stop in front of Benaroya Hall. I recently learned that not all skinheads are racist neo-Nazis, but I’m thinking the fact that this one had the letters H-A-T-E tattooed on the fingers of his right hand is an indication that he’s probably not one of the “other” kinds.
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I am a very, very big fan of hot weather. So, as you might imagine, I have been thrilled with our recent (and unexpected–it’s June, after all) Seattle-style heat wave. When it’s nice like this, I tend to walk more often–partly because I want to be outside as much as I can, and partly because the buses get a little weird when the temperature climbs above 80. Folks get on half-dressed, exposing parts of their bodies the rest of us were never meant to see. (Depending on the individuals in question, this can sometimes make the bus another kind of hot.) Irritation escalates to anger in the space of seconds. Passengers will stand in the middle of the aisle (blocking traffic and causing more irritation/anger) rather than sit next to another sweaty body–that is, unless the bus driver has turned on the air conditioning full blast, making the bus cold enough to activate my Raynaud’s. And of course, bus-wide discussions are all about the weather (not necessarily weird but certainly less inter
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When Metro and Sound Transit’s wi-fi pilot was first announced, I was one happy bus chick. I fantasized about using it all the time–to leave work early (Why work in the office when you can work on your way home from the office?), to IM with girlfriends in different time zones, to check Tracker for the routes I planned to transfer to. In reality, I’ve used it successfully twice: once on the 545 and once on the 48. I was so excited, I didn’t do anything useful–just sent lots of e-mail with the subject line, “I’m on the bus!” Most of the time, I can’t even get it to work. I can get on the network (or so my laptop says), but I can’t get an IP address. (That’s nerdspeak for, “I can’t get on the Internets.”)
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The point of a blog, or so I understand, is to chronicle your life as it happens. The problem with this: While life is happening, you don’t necessarily have time to chronicle. Life has been happening to me since my visit to Atlantic Base last Thursday, which is why I am just now getting around to writing about it. Let’s see what I can remember…
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Yesterday, Adam and I raced for the cure in honor of my mom and everyone else we know who has dealt with a terminal illness. Afterwards, we raced for the 27. We were breathing heavily by the time we got on–a big mistake on this particular 27. You see, another of the (tiny handful of) drawbacks of a bus-dependent lifestyle is the occasional encounter with an unpleasant odor. (I’ll spare you the examples.) Sometimes, the odor can be escaped with a discreet move to another seat. At other times, it permeates the entire vehicle, creating what bus riders across our fair city not-so-affectionately refer to as a “funky bus.” When teen-aged girls, who are at once new to this phenomenon, hypersensitive to smells, and inclined to seek attention, encounter a funky bus, they tend to complain, loudly and for the duration of the ride. Experienced bus chicks learn to sit near an open window, bury their faces in their sleeves, and mentally travel to a happier place.
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A couple of times in the last week, I’ve been confronted with some surprising assumptions about people who choose not to own cars. First, there was Knute Berger’s unwarranted (and, I might add, illogical) attack on me and a few other extreme “bionauts” who, apparently, mooch off our neighbors while simultaneously looking down our noses at them. (To read rebuttals to Knute’s argument, try Seattlest and The Stranger’s Slog.)
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